childer" to dance
around, a dime's worth of candy and tinsel on the boughs.

From the attic over the way came, in spells between, the gentle tones
of a German song about the Christ-child. Christmas in the East Side
tenements begins with the sunset on the "Holy Eve," except where the
name is as a threat or a taunt. In a hundred such homes the whir of
many sewing-machines, worked by the sweater's slaves with weary feet
and aching backs, drowned every feeble note of joy that struggled to
make itself heard above the noise of the great treadmill.

To these what was Christmas but the name for suffering, reminder of
lost kindred and liberty, of the slavery of eighteen hundred years,
freedom from which was purchased only with gold. Ay, gold! The gold
that had power to buy freedom yet, to buy the good-will, ay, and the
good name, of the oppressor, with his houses and land. At the thought
the tired eye glistened, the aching back straightened, and to the
weary foot there came new strength to finish the long task while the
city slept.

Where a narrow passageway put in between two big tenements to a
ramshackle rear barrack, Nibsy, the newsboy, halted in the shadow of
the doorway and stole a long look down the dark alley.

He toyed uncertainly with his still unsold papers--worn dirty and
ragged as his clothes by this time--before he ventured in, picking his
way between barrels and heaps of garbage; past the Italian cobbler's
hovel, where a tallow dip, stuck in a cracked beer-glass, before a
picture of the "Mother of God," showed that even he knew it was
Christmas and liked to show it; past the Sullivan flat, where blows
and drunken curses mingled with the shriek of women, as Nibsy had
heard many nights before this one.

He shuddered as he felt his way past the door, partly with a
premonition of what was in store for himself, if the "old man" was at
home, partly with a vague, uncomfortable feeling that somehow
Christmas Eve should be different from other nights, even in the
alley; down to its farthest end, to the last rickety flight of steps
that led into the filth and darkness of the tenement. Up this he
crept, three flights, to a door at which he stopped and listened,
hesitating, as he had stopped at the entrance to the alley; then, with
a sudden, defiant gesture, he pushed it open and went in.

A bare and cheerless room; a pile of rags for a bed in the corner,
another in the dark alcove, miscalled bedroom; under the window a